I am led to these reflections by a new statistical work by M. Guerry,* a work remarkable on many accounts, more especially remarkable on this account-that it bowls down at once all the ninepins with which late statists had been amusing themselves, and sets up again many of the old notions, which from their very antiquity were out of vogue. Some very wise persons have declared that crimes depended wholly upon laws, others, that they depended wholly upon, what they called, instruction; while a few, with a still falser philosophy, have passed, in their contempt for all existing rules, from the niceties of calculation, to the vagueness of accident, and insinuated, not daring to assert, that vice and virtue are the mere rouge et noir' of life, the pure effects of chance and hazard Against all these champions, M. Guerry enters the field. Dividing France into five regions or districts, composed each of 17 departments, and dividing the * Statistique morale de la France. DIVISION OF FRANCE INTO FIVE REGIONS. NORTH-Aisne, Ardennes, Calvados, Eure, Population. 8,757,700 4 crimes committed in each of these regions into two classes-i. e., crimes against property,' and crimes against the person,' the following table, taking one hundred as the number of crimes committed in France, gives the result of his calculations. SOUTH.-Ardèche, Arriège, Aude, Aveyron, WEST. Charente, Charente Inférieure, Côtes du Nord, Dordogne, Finistère, Gironde, Ille et Vilaine, Landes, Loire Inférieure, Lot et Garonne, Maine et Loire, Mayenne, Morbihan, Basses Pyrénées, Deux Sèvres, Vendée, Vienne CENTRE.-Allier, Cantal, Cher, Corrèze, Creuse, Eure et Loire, Indre, Indre et Loire, Loire, Loir et Cher, Loiret, Haute Loire, Nèvre, Puy de Dôme, Sarthe, Haute-Vienne, Yonne Corse Population. 4,826,493 5,840,996 7,008,788 5,238,905 185,079 TOTAL POPULATION 31,857,961 REGIONS. REGIONS. Crimes against the Person. 1825. 1826. 1827. 1828. 1829. 1830. Average. Of all the marvellous calculations ever yet published, this calculation is perhaps the most marvellous; for whatever the basis on which the computation is made, it is not a whit the less * M. Guerry takes the number of persons accused, as the basis of his calculations; for where there is a person accused, there, he says, naturally enough, there must be a crime committed; but it may so happen, that where five or six persons are accused of a crime, only one may have committed it, and vice versa. This is among many of the observations that might be C wonderful that it should in six successive years give an almost similar result; and this, not in one species of crime-not in one division of France, but in all the divisions of France, and in each distinct class of crime! . . . Thus maintaining between the different portions of the kingdom, a particular and almost invariable criminal ratio, (if I may thus express myself,) which none of the many casualties to which human life is subject, seem effectually to alter or control. A difference of this kind cannot be the effect of law, for the law in all parts of France is the same-it cannot be the effect of accident, because, it would not, surely, in that case, perpetually recur. What has instruction to do with it-I mean that kind of instruction, on which persons, considering these subjects, usually found their propositions? made upon the general accuracy of these kind of tables. Monsieur Guerry's method, however, seems as likely to be correct as another, for, in taking the basis of convictions, you would only alter your errors; and indeed the original documents are collected in the same manner by the minister of justice. It is to be regretted that we have not before us, however, all the elements from which these tables are formed—tables, which of themselves, if accurate, afford sufficient matter for the most important work on history and legislation that has yet appeared. |